Later this week the House will vote on HR 1, a “continuing resolution” (CR) to fund the federal government for the remainder of FY 2011. HR 1 would cut NIH funding by $1.6 billion (5.2%) BELOW the current level – reducing the nation’s medical research budget to $29.4 billion! Everyone in the scientific community – researchers, trainees, lab personnel, etc. – must protest these short-sighted cuts. The cuts will slow the discovery of new treatments, lead to wasteful termination of projects, and ultimately cost some Americans their jobs. In addition, cutting the NIH budget will discourage young people from pursuing careers in science.

Please contact your Representative IMMEDIATELY to urge him/her to oppose the cuts to NIH and vote against HR 1.

What I’m sick of is that the result of this literal evil hate legislation against other citizens due to selfishness that started the economic disaster in the US, will be ‘genocide’ or ‘death panels’ in a figurative manner.

Why decry about aborted babies of minorities when you are relegating them to death in infancy/childhood by destroying the healthcare safety net or cut schooling. Or kill grandparents by ridding state nursing home oversight and assistance to geriatrics and cut Medicare. ‘Shoot if feeling threatened’ laws while carrying a gun.

Why doesn’t anyone call them on this bullshit for what it is. A rightwing self righteous conservative attempt to ‘cull the herd’ more vicious than any pro-abortion, birth control items or end-of-lifecare programs concocted by liberals.

Lessee… 31 Billion reduced to 29.4 Billion (5.2%) is not reasonable in these economic times? We must vigorously oppose this?

vs

That was a question Greg.

… does not compute. Does not compute.

So, the answers would be no, and yes. The reasons for no is that NIH research is vitally important and underfunded as it is, and dollars spent via the NIH are major job creators. Talk about shovel ready! But they are test tubes, of course. American test tubes made, sold, and maintained by Americans to be used by mostly Americans in American based labs that produce economy stimulating tax-base enriching semi-professional and professional jobs while at the same time curing cancer etc. And test tubes are a euphemism for expensive medical research equipment.

Significant advancements were made over the last year for which there is a detailed report (2009) in childhood asthma cause, risk, and interventions. The early detection research network for cancer was advanced, major work on breast cancer re-occurence was accomplished including a molecular test to identify high risk women, a surgical treatment for hypoplastic left heart syndrome was developed (under trial), refinement of treatment of Kawasaki disease, some meaningful worko n Muscular Dystrophy (my wife got to do some of that work), large scale clinical trials for treatment of osteoprorosis, lupus, statin treatment of heart disease were funded, approaches for preventing type 2 diabetes, a major public health campaign and additional research on diabetes were funded. The human genome was advanced with 3 billion base pairs (1500% increase) finished, work reducing the transmission of parent to infant HIV transmission by 25% in the US with results not quite as good in Thailand and Uganda, work with progesterone 17P reducing at risk pre-term birth by 30%, other work in fetal pharmacology, stoped a major influenza outbreak in Southeast Asia, discovered about 100 genes linked to neurological diseases, developed methods of diagnosing MD, spinal muscular atrophy, and about 30 other diseases as well as developing early work on therapies for many of these diseases, developed protein saliva survey method as a non-invasive diagnosis for mahy disease, developed initial work on diagnostic micro-chip array system, developed test for four cancer markers in saliva with 90% accuracy rate, did a study of adolescent depression (which is linked to thousands of gun-related deaths per year so Republicans would be opposed to that), completed multi year project to specifiy the structures of 1,300+ important proteins, developed protein modeling methods, did the Warfarin Aspriing clinical trial, the Clotbust trial, the African American anti platelet study and the unruptured intracranial aneurysm trial, all of which will lead to significant reduction in stroke incidence and improved treatment.

The NIH is not only wasting immediate tax dollars, but also causing future waste in the budget. By saving lives and allowing more people to live longer, our future Medicare payments will go up!

We need to go back to the fundamental health programs and policies that were in place when our Real American founding fathers established this once great nation. Surgery without washing up first made people strong. Real men don’t wear masks when amputating limbs caused by demons in small wounds.

Why do old people need to die in expensive hospitals when we have spent all that money on perfectly good gutters in every major city in America?

God told us to have lots of children, but when most of them survive to adulthood, we have all sorts of serious world problems like adding to the complexity and cost of estate planning. I bet your average poor American family can’t even afford a decent team of lawyers anymore.

And whatever happened to using leeches to suck illness out of the body? That was a good sound method of curing people and my large investment in facilities on Leech Lake has nothing at all to do with my factual observations in this matter.

The NIH has no business destroying the sound economic and spiritual values this country was founded upon. This just isn’t natural. You don’t see other animals setting up large research facilities to prevent disease and increase health.

As long as the US is within on standard deviation of the world averages for life expectancy and infant mortality I see no reason to be elitist and try and out do every one else.

This is just a tongue and cheek argument I use when people try and cut education fund in my town. They hate to pay taxes to have good schools and ask why can’t we just be average schools. I respond with do you want an average doctor for your next surgery.

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